Learning to Thrive Beyond Pornography use was the greatest challenge of our life and marriage. It had rocked my self confidence, tainted all of the most important experiences of my life and become the most impossible challenge I had as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

With this podcast or at https://www.zachspafford.com you'll learn about the struggle, how to overcome pornography use, and where to find additional resources to begin to thrive beyond pornography with your spouse.

At some point I took a step away from all the 12 step meetings and councilors and started to figure out my own brain, to look at my issue as something that I had the answer to and I was going to figure it out. Here I share those lessons and give you the power to start your own journey free. Whether you struggle with unwanted pornography use or are the spouse or partner, whether you feel stuck or just don't know where to start, here I will teach you principles, tools and skills that you can use today to change how you think and, in the end, what you do.

You'll hear interviews with my spouse, with experts on human sexuality and with former and current pornography users on how you can overcome your own struggle with addictive behavior.

The Thrive Beyond Pornography podcast will bring new perspective to your struggle and keep you coming back to improve all aspects of your life. (formerly, The Self Mastery Podcast: Overcome Pornography Forever)

Untitled project from Captivate

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Hey everybody. Welcome to Thrive Beyond Pornography. I'm your host, Zach Spafford,

Darcy and I spent the week in Wisconsin. So we didn't record a new episode this week, but we did want to share with you an older episode that we really enjoyed both making and one that I think is really appropriate. This conversation is about why we give so much power to pornography, and I think it's highly relevant. We had an opportunity while we were in Wisconsin to do a fireside for the local congregation there, and

we found that highly. Valuable. Partly because we got to talk about how pornography often has so much power in our lives and how we can actually mitigate that. So we hope you enjoy this episode. We love you guys, and we'll see you with a brand new episode next week.

This is something that essentially is in the back of every single person's reality. Tell us what it is, why I. Do we give pornography so much power? So I was driving home from my parents' house tonight. We had just had a surprise party for our son who turned 16, and I just could not stop thinking about this.

About it and ponder how we can help people and how we can strengthen marriages. And this is a thought that just keeps coming to my mind. Why do we give pornography so much power? And so I really want to have a discussion with Zach on air and talk about this. So why do we give pornography so much power?

What does it mean to give pornography power in your mind? To me, pornography. Really is powerless, right? Is it is only as powerful as we give it power. And what I mean by that is it's literally just naked people on a screen and you have to consent to it all along the way. Yep. Right?

That's never happened to anyone that I know of. I'm sure it's happened to someone, but it's not, it's never happened to anyone that I know of, and I don't think it's happened to anyone you know of either. So if that is the case, right? If that's never happened, then what, where is what is pornography in terms of the power that we give it?

It's consent, right? Yeah. We say yes to it. So why I. So maybe twofold, right? So why do we say yes to it? And then why does it hold so much power in its capacity to, we think it has this power to destroy us and to destroy our marriage. So why do we allow that in our lives? I know for me, a lot of the ideas that I have been fed were that.

And so anything we're thinking ends up in our result line of our life. It just, that's how it goes. And this is not to say that you don't want to not look at pornography like this is not to say that, oh, this is a bad commandment or a bad thing. Yeah, of course this isn't who you want to be. I have never come across a man who was like, I just like looking at pornography because it feels great and that's fine with me. And the, I don't care how that's gonna impact my family. Yeah. I don't care. The impact on my wife, I don't care the impact in my life. I'm sure that person exists, but I haven't run across them.

And the truth is, is that it's about that's about fear. , that's about not creating an intimate relationship that's about fear, that's not about being there for him, that's about worrying how his actions are gonna impact you. And there's, the truth is, pornography doesn't end marriages.

What we choose to believe and how we choose to react to pornography use. Is what ends the marriage. And we're not saying that if you choose to leave a marriage because pornography is there, that that's wrong or right. Like we're not trying to place a moral judgment on this. We are just trying to point out the, and clarify the reality of what's going on.

So your actions are gonna be control, but control in a marriage is not a good move, right? Yeah. And I think for the person who's struggling with pornography, pornography's gonna destroy my life. How? Wow. I'm pretty sure every time they struggle, they're like, yep it destroyed my life.

It just, it doesn't drive the result that people are looking for, which is that they don't turn to pornography to feel better. Right? So to get away from this idea, pornography's gonna destroy us. And how do we take back our power? That's really the question here.

We're not advocating that you stay together just because Yes. That's not what we're looking at here. But the people that we work with are very awesome, strong LDS couples who are striving to do what they believe is right and live as closely to the gospel as they can. And the men are men who want to be righteous.

Yeah, they do. Yes. They struggle with this and they think, how can I be a better man? So how do we take our power back? What do you think, Zach? I think the very first thing you have to do is you gotta recognize that you have agency, and we talked about this on the last podcast, and we're talking about how.

It's about saying, this is what I'm gonna choose to do because I choose to do it, not because I'm reacting to my emotions. And for men it's the opposite. It's if you can't choose to say yes to pornography, then you can't choose to say no, which is, again, it's abdicating your agency, it's pushing it away.

It's saying I have to follow a set of rules that I have not chosen, but I am obligated to uphold. And that's not gonna help anybody because when you have to follow rules that you haven't chosen, Even though that's what you really want, right? Even though what you really want is to not look at pornography, but you also don't feel like you have agency in that space.

Absolutely. Whereas never. Never. Never . It's kinda, there's very few things that I I guess not very few things that are like a never, but I just think of all the other things that we struggle with in life, like we allow so much grace. For each other, right? Like it, I just think of like yelling, right?

Or losing your temper or saying hurtful things, right? There's always that time where you say something to your spouse or even your children that you're like, oh, I shouldn't have said that. That wasn't nice, or That came off wrong. Or I'm certain that tore that person down, right? That didn't uplift them.

Yeah. And that's why the atonement is there. Yeah. And all of those things that I mentioned before, we mess up and we do things all the time that we are not happy with. That is not the way we wanna show up in the world, and yet we keep going. We don't. Hopefully we don't beat ourselves up to the point that we feel so bad that we just keep doing it.

Now, do you want to? Probably not, but you can. You might want to in that moment, but your goal, right? Your higher brain. Because I think it would be like no. I actually wanted to, just like I wanted to eat the, that Big Mac and those fries or whatever. We don't eat McDonald's, but if we did Wow.

You referenced eating a hamburger, like you're not a vegetarian. I am a vegetarian. Yeah. Anyhow, point being is we do want things in a moment, and we also don't want those things long term. And being able to separate those two things and being able to say, yeah, I can choose this if that's what I want, or I can not choose this if that's what I want, and that's okay either way.

And I always, I worked in corporate for a long time and alcohol was readily available every single event that I went to. And there was a period where you were required to buy it, like as part of your job? Yeah. Oh yeah, actually, which is really a funny story. Zach and I we'd only been married probably what, five years?

And we're standing in the alcohol line or in the beer section. We lived in Milwaukee at the time. Which beer is a really big thing here, and we're standing there what beer do we buy? We have no idea. We've never even had a sip of beer. Like we had no idea. They sent the wrong people to buy the beer.

I think my bosses liked that I bought all the beer cuz they knew I wasn't like buying extra and just keeping it at home. . Yeah. That, , I'm certain that every once in a while he would sneak in Root beer for himself, I would buy root beer and bring it to the events and then of course nobody else would drink it.

You would just be like, oh, this is what I needed to do to survive in this moment. And I like to equate that to pornography because the truth is that our emotions sometimes feel like we're gonna die. We feel lonely and we feel distressed, and we feel frustrated, and we feel lost, and we feel hopeless.

And even though you and I can right now in this moment, or you can even feel really excited. Oh yeah, right? If you're not, like not good at feeling really excited. You're like, oh, I need to eat something to tone this excitement down. I don't know if that ever happens for pornography users, but I see that happening with food for me.

I can choose it tomorrow, I can choose it in a week. But that's a totally my choice. I can also say no, and we don't really allow that. We, it's interesting when I was a member, or sorry, when I was when I was, when we don't really allow that, when I was working corporate, people would say to me, Hey, you're a Mormon, you can't drink alcohol.

My, in our membership. And then the techniques that I teach. If you are trying to work through this and you need some help, you can go to our membership and then one of the components in our membership is plan ahead. And I go into depth in this, in, in the membership, and I'm like this is what you need to do to take back your agency and create a process in your frontal cortex.

And men say to us, I could never choose to look at pornography. My wife would never be okay with me choosing to look at pornography. Yeah, and I get it. Oh my goodness. As a wife, I totally get it. Like I, I hear you and women I'm on your side, and this is, and it's really hard because this is part of the process, right?

That feeling, I know you know what I'm talking about, and that feeling is there. I believe a lot more in marriages where there's pornography, because I. Yeah, there's always that period where women try to use sex to control pornography use. Yeah. And part of taking back your agency, taking back your power from pornography is being able to say, I can totally do this if I choose to.

Owning that agency a hundred percent. And then if you don't choose to, that's okay too. And by no means that's better. That's perfect. Yeah. By no means am I advocating yes to use pornography. That's not what I'm saying. Please don't misunderstand me on purpose because you would have to really misunderstand me to misunderstand me on this.

It's not about the power that pornography has over your family. It's not about the power that pornography has over your life. It's about you choosing to do something to deal with your emotions and. Sometimes that's not really who you want to be long term, but that may be who you choose to be in that moment.

My kids need this. And, you're all planned out. You have your money, you have your budget, you're ready to go. You get to the store and you're like, there is nothing here. Oh my gosh, the styles are horrible right now. I cannot find anything. And you really struggled to get what's on your list and to spend that money that you allotted.

Yet another scenario would be like, you go into the store and you're just bored. You're like, oh, I'm just gonna go. Walk through Target for fun or whatever. All of a sudden they have so many cute clothes in their. They're a clothing section and there's so many, like good sales and the shoes are on sale and Right.

Like we, we find all of this stuff when we're not planning on it. And it's like we spend hundreds of dollars and you're like, I didn't I came here for sugar. And that is I'd be very surprised if you showed up at a clothing store for sugar and then you walked away. No. I said Target at Target.

Yeah. You're not necessarily numbing. Or avoiding an emotion. It's like it's purposeful and it's, but it's also giving you the power to choose if that is what you choose. And this question of, how do we, why do we give pornography so much power and how do we take it back is really a, I think it's really one of agency.

It's one of how can I reassert my agency in this space? Allow myself to feel my feelings and put into place a process a technique in my day-to-day that is going to help me say, I am reasserting my agency over this. And for everybody it's different. Yeah. And I just think, most of the couples that we work with are really awesome couples.

We are winning. And we take back the power that we have as a husband and a wife, or as a mother and a father and a child. And we just decided, no pornography is not going to ruin us. I am not. Even if someone looks at pornography, it's not going to ruin us. Yeah. I am not going to allow pornography to win.

I love that. How amazing that would be. I just think that is so much more beautiful and so much more empowering to come together as a couple and be like, look, we don't like that Pornography's here. I haven't made, I haven't heard of a husband that Zach works with that's yeah, I really like that.

I think he should just keep doing it. That is not who we're working with, and I just think if both the husband and the wife can get together and get on the same page and fight this battle together against pornography and win, how much better? How much better would it be? Yeah, because I just feel like sometimes it feels like a, this is your problem.

You did this to me. Why do you suck so much? You should be a better husband. You should make better choices. Like I could just keep going on and on. I feel like we've had this conversation before many years ago, right? So we could come at this like that. Yeah. Or we could come at it as wow, we are a pretty awesome couple.

Just a symptom of where we need someone to improve in an area that needs some work. Like just if there's I don't know, I just, dental work just popped into my mind, right? If you've got some cavities, you don't throw away the whole person. Yeah. You're not like we've got some cavities.

Let's rip out all of your good teeth. Yeah. And just put in dentures. In dentures. Where oh, I can see that there's an area you definitely need to get that cavity fixed and drilled out and filled and Right. And I just think of our husbands or even the wives. Or, and this doesn't even have to do with pornography.

And you just have these few that need some work. Let's focus on how amazing your teeth are, all those other ones, and let's just also work on that instead of so much yeah. Freaking out emotion. Like just, yeah, just so much emotion and it's really hard to fix a problem when we are so overcome with emotion that we can't even, I.

See what the problem is. Oh yeah. This is, this is very much the kind of thing that, especially as a parent, you understand. You know how sometimes when your kids come in and they're like freaking out and losing their minds and they're so upset and you can't even understand what's going on. Oh yeah. And they're just screaming, right?

And you're like, dude, I really, really do wanna help you, but I. I li I really can't understand what it is that you want. And as the adult, as the parent, then in that moment you're like, okay, well I'm ready to hear you whenever you're ready to talk so I can hear you and understand you. I'm here, I'm ready.

I'm listening and being that kind of a person in that moment, Rather than freaking out yourself. Cuz if you freak out yourself, what's gonna happen? The kid's gonna keep going and you're never gonna solve the problem. And it's not even gonna work. Oh. And we have plenty of examples of that, right?

Whereas oftentimes as the parent, if you stay calm, you can typically help calm the child, help them gain control of their emotions, and have a real conversation. And typically it's like, oh, you want a sippy cup of milk? That's all you want. I could totally help you with that. Let's go get a sippy cup of milk.

This. Let me show you how I'm your hero. Yeah. , right? But I don't know that I don't, it's probably a tangent, but I just feel so passionate about how we can get couples on the same page fighting this battle together and love and understanding and. And real intimacy connection. Just being connected and being willing to accept someone for who they are.

It creates a space for them to risk and to be more, and to do more than they would have otherwise been able to do. Had you not accepted them more. They are, if you're constantly telling your spouse, Hey, you gotta do this, you gotta do this, you gotta do this, because if you don't do this, I can't feel good, then it's gonna be really hard for them to risk.

The opportunity to change, change is a risk. It's difficult, it's not simple. It's not always easy done, easily done. And if they want to stop doing something right, like looking at pornography, then they're gonna have to risk feeling. Something else. They're gonna have to risk dealing with their feelings in a way that they've never done before.

We're accepting our children where they are and not freaking out about what's going on with them and helping them resolve the problem by creating a soft landing when they take those risks and they find new ways to become a better version of themselves. Yeah, and I think that goes also with accepting ourselves for who we are and where we're at too.

Which I think that's where it starts is a huge, yeah. It's right. You can't, it's very hard to accept somebody else where they are if you don't accept yourself where you are. And that's where it always comes back to the, I think the best way to help your spouse is to help yourself a hundred percent and stop giving pornography so much power in your life.

As me trying to get through pornography, use, you trying to get through the control of me and the struggle with feeling, the pain of me viewing pornography and what it meant, what you thought it meant about you. Yeah. And it's I always think about this what would I do if Zach came to me now and said, Hey, I looked at pornography and I really think the only thing that I would think was, man, I'm really sad for you because I know how important it is for you to not look at pornography like I feel like it would be, I would feel sad for him and I don't think I would be, feel sad for me.

And all of that narrative, that story of who I am now. That would, I think there'd be a chink in the armor if I had to come to you and say, Hey I looked at pornography. And so that would be a sad moment for me too. Now, would it destroy us? Would it make it so that we stopped doing this? No. No.

Mm-hmm. awesome.

All right, you guys. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you next week. Bye.